Friday, 24 October 2014

Sound Advice: Rat Queens Vol. 1

Advisement on Rat Queens: Sass and Sorcery

by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch, Image
Comics

Rat Queens is a title that was recommended
to me by a number of comic-reading friends well before I ever considered
picking up an issue. Their enthusiastic, shouted recommendations had me picking
up a copy during a sale at my favorite store, where even the owner ringing up
my purchase said to me “Call us when you finish that, you’re going to want
more.” I devoured Rat Queens over the course of 2 days, and by the end of the
trade I was mad at myself because this book was so great and I wasn’t already reading it.

Rat
Queens Vol 1 Feels like an amorphous combination of
straight up paperback fantasy adventure story and what I think of as trashy
“chick lit”—the sort of book that I read for pure enjoyment, with no goal of
educational or literary enrichment (This is not a bad thing—reading is
sometimes quite legitimately about escapism). The story of Rat Queens is well-versed and grounded in the tradition of fantasy/adventure
tales, but so fun and funny that it feels like it should be a guilty pleasure. It’s
also unapologetically foul-mouthed and bloody, which I appreciate from my
fantasy tales.

This book is straight-up fun to read.

But if you haven’t read it, assume some mild *SPOILERS* below.

This book had been described to me by
numerous friends as a fantasy story if fantasy stories happened with the same
dialogue as a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
As I read through it, I was surprised with how accurate this description
was—I had heard this said about the book so many times that I kept expecting to
turn the page and be confronted with the tabletop game controlling the Rat
Queens, but it never happened.

Rat Queens is almost the antithesis of
trying too hard—the book flows, with casual dialogue, a quick-paced and easy to
follow plot, and characters that are entertaining and relatable, while
remaining interesting. In all of the best ways, reading Rat Queens fells akin to watching a well-done sitcom—I’m laughing,
I care about the characters, and I want to keep exploring more.

Wiebe and Upchurch do a fantastic job
balancing this fun style with the hallmarks of a fantasy tale. Our heroines
fight, swear, revel, drink, and fight some more.The embark upon a quest, encounter a mystery,
and must work together with people and groups outside of their own to confront
a problem. For all that the story arc feels almost comfortingly familiar to
this long time fantasy reader, Rat Queens
is a breath of fresh air. The Queens are self-aware enough to give credit
to others for great lines said in battle, or mock fantasy-world stereotypes, such
as the good sight of elves, embracing the best fantasy tropes without feeling
weighted down by them.

One of the things Rat Queens does incredibly well is the causal, free dialogue,
peppered with a large number of jokes. The choice to use modern language and
slang is one of the elements of the story that had me flipping pages and
rooting for our characters – If I was fighting monsters, my vocabulary would be
much closer to that of the Queens than of those fantasy novels I grew up on. The
Rat Queens and company are foul-mouthed in the way you would expect a person to
be when faced with an army of trolls.

The interesting supporting characters also
play into my enjoyment of this story – The Rat Queens themselves are
interesting and becoming more and more
multifaceted as the story goes on, but
I’m just as charmed by the Sawyer, the captain of the guard, by the other bands
of adventures (The Four Daves make me smile all the way through), and even by the band of trolls the Queens eventually fight. I want to know more about our main quartet of heroes, but I also really want to spend more time with these awesome supporting characters.

Wiebe and Upchurch should also get some
real credit for a book with consistently diverse representation. I noticed this
immediately with our four main characters, women of different body types and
ethnicity, but as I read I also noticed it in the background—the setting is
populated by characters with a range of skin colors and body types. We also see
some representation of diverse sexual orientation and religious beliefs and
ideologies, though this is a harder type of diversity to represent in a visual
medium. I did find that occasionally this can feel a bit forced—Dee and Betty
talking about Dee’s religious beliefs while working to infiltrate a guild
office comes to mind – but intent is there, and the heart of the story is in
the right place.

Rat Queens will be staying on my list as a
book I follow in trades. Volume One is a solid opening arc, a full story that
leaves tendrils of further story to be explored in future installments. I want
to know more about the characters, sure, but more than anything else, I want to
spend more time in the world Wiebe & Upchurch have created—a diverse
fantasyland populated by foul-mouthed, bad-ass adventurers. There is always
space in my life for a read that gets me turning pages and leaves me smiling.
I’ve already begun to shout my own loud, enthusiastic recommendations at
friends.

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Due to poverty and an urge to buy better comics, I have decided to be super-selective about which superhero comics I read. Harnessing the Awesome Power of Maths, I have determined that I can afford to read 10 ongoing titles. So I get to read 10, and only 10, titles published by either Marvel or DC (as well as one creator owned trade paperback a week). This blog is me working through deciding which 10 superhero titles are the 10 worthiest of reading and discussing why creator owned comics are amazing.

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I'm a Science Graduate Student who loves comic books, enjoys novels, and needs practice writing. Welcome to my nonsense.
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